[RyMac]

I have a MBP 80GB hard drive. I'm going to attempt, crosses fingers, to upgrade the hard drive to a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400 hard drive. From what I've seen, it is a minor surgery of sorts, so I'm well prepared for that.
Anyway, is there a quick, easy way to transfer ALL data from the old hard drive, to the new one? Like a USB to USB? I don't have any experience with this, so I apologize if this is a well known answer. Will I have to reinstall OSX on the new hard drive? Is there a way to completely back up my current hard drive on a series of DVD's, and then move everything that way to the new hard drive?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

[smax013]

Quote:

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I have a MBP 80GB hard drive. I'm going to attempt, crosses fingers, to upgrade the hard drive to a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400 hard drive. From what I've seen, it is a minor surgery of sorts, so I'm well prepared for that.
Anyway, is there a quick, easy way to transfer ALL data from the old hard drive, to the new one? Like a USB to USB? I don't have any experience with this, so I apologize if this is a well known answer. Will I have to reinstall OSX on the new hard drive? Is there a way to completely back up my current hard drive on a series of DVD's, and then move everything that way to the new hard drive?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

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I basically just did want you are planning on doing...except my new drive was a 250 gb drive.
You basically want to clone the 80 gb hard drive to the new 160 gb hard drive. There is two basic ways to do this.
The first way is to do it by way of a third drive. If you have an external USB or, better yet, Firewire, then hook that drive up to the computer and get a program like SuperDuper to clone the internal drive to the external drive. Then go through the process of replacing the internal hard drive. Once that is complete, boot off the external USB drive (hold down the Option key when booting up and select the external drive to use as the boot drive). Then using SuperDuper to clone from the external drive back to the new internal drive.

The second way is to get an external enclosure to use with the new drive temporarily. Here is a USB example and a Firewire example. Install the new drive in the enclosure and attach it to the computer. Use a program like SuperDuper to clone the old internal drive to the new drive in the external enclosure. Once done, take the new drive out of the enclosure and do the surgery to install it into the MBP. Once it is installed, the computer should boot up with the new drive since it already has the full content of the old drive cloned to it. Then install the old drive into the external enclosure and use it as an external drive for backup or more storage.

And if you don't have it, here is a guide to installing the hard drive.

[dougoftheabaci]

You'll need SuperDuper to do it. Don't bother looking for another option if you want it to be a clone of your previous system. If you use a generic backup software the volume will not be bootable, but SuperDuper has that ability, to make a bootable backup.
If you can find another backup software that can make a bootable copy of your drive, then that will work too. Then all you need to do is clone your current internal to your new internal (temporarily in an external case, which you can get from Newegg.com for rather cheap) then swap the drives.
The benefit of this way is you end up with an extra external 80GB to keep, which from personal experience can come in really handy.